Let me be among the first to congratulate Congressman Bill Huizenga, R-Zeeland, on his forthcoming re-election to the U.S. House of Representatives this November.

I know it’s bad luck to convey sentiments of good fortune before they actually arrive, but the toothless state of the Democratic Party in West Michigan makes any scenario in which Huizenga is not returned to office an improbable bet.

I mean, the situation from the Dem end is pathetic.

David KolbThe sole contender for the nomination of the president’s political party for the Congress has dropped out citing health reasons, and there is not a single other face to replace him, the drop-out having occurred like a miracle for Republicans just after the filing deadline door had closed.

So, other than a write-in bid, which is the longest of the long shots in politics, Huizenga is back in like Flynn, and once again West Michigan’s residents of the 2nd Congressional District will be represented in Congress by a right-wing member of the Party of No.

Huizenga, who took office in the tea party wave of 2010, is just the latest congressman-for-life in West Michigan.

Before Congressman Bill, residents “enjoyed” decades of representation from Huizenga’s predecessors, Pete Hoekstra and Guy Vander Jagt, both far-right Republicans, with all the political baggage that entails.

Heck, you can go all the way back to the early years of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal before you will find a Democratic member of Congress from this area, and the term of Harry W. Musselwhite, a Manistee businessman, lasted only two years.

I don’t want to badmouth David Takitaki, the ex-Democratic contender for Congress, for spoiling things for Democrats by dropping out at an extraordinarily inopportune moment.

The young man showed some heart in throwing his hat into the ring, but his shouldn’t have been in there alone.

First, this area’s Congress seat is too important a responsibility to leave in the hands of a single party, term after term after term so that it becomes a self-fulfilling monopoly of dumb ideas.

Second, the party seeking to contest that seat should never have entrusted the battle to a single individual, moreover one who has never been elected to public office, and is really without much of a track record in politics or public life.

But this is the story of Democratic Party politics in West Michigan going back nearly a century now, or at least pertaining to the congressional contests that have been waged in the omnipresent 2nd and what was once the 9th Congressional District (in Vander Jagt’s day).

My experience doesn’t go back that far (yet!), but what I’ve seen in my years as a political observer has been that, with only a few notable exceptions, the candidates offered to the voters by the Dems was a sacrificial lamb, if that.

Sometimes, they were even worse, more conservative and less progressive than even the Republican in the race.

I’ve had candidates sit across from the Republican at editorial boards and not even challenge their opponent on policy to any meaningful degree. As I’ve said, pathetic.

Look at Huizenga’s leanings, which are 100 percent for the 1 percent.

Any decent liberal Democrat could shred the congressman’s voting record, which includes enthusiastic support for the Paul Ryan plan to end Medicare as we know it, and even more radical Republican stances, including allowing the nation to go into default during the debt limit crisis of last summer.

But I don’t blame him; that’s what Bill Huizenga is. That’s who he represents.

Yet, if Democrats can’t put up anyone who will give this guy a run for his money (and Huizenga has raised tons of the green stuff in two short years, folks), the 99 percent of their constituents -- the middle-class, the working poor, students, women, all of those under-served and suffering minorities who are getting the GOP shaft -- well, then shame on them.

The best West Michigan Democrats can hope for now is for the GOP to lose its grip on the House of Representatives this fall, leaving their GOP representative in the new minority as a meaningless protest vote.

If that happens, though, it won’t be because of anything they did. It would be like claiming that because a fan watched his team on television, the team won.

So start practicing now, Dems:

“Go team!”

Good job. Go grab a cold one from the fridge.

David Kolb is former editorial page editor of The Muskegon Chronicle. Email: writersgroupllc@gmail.com